TECHNOLOGY

Innovations Technology &

Students develop virtual reality hikes

By Brendan Quealy

Take a trek to Skeleton Point on the South Kaibab Trail along the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Head to California and make your way to the Bridge to Nowhere or Potato Chip Rock. Find yourself atop Mother Miguel Mountain in Ohio or in the caves of Natural Tunnel State Park in Virginia.

All are possibilities from the comfort of your home due in large part to the work of two recent high school graduates in Elk Rapids, Michigan.

Zak Miracle and Garrison Waugh spent part of their senior year developing a way for people to take virtual hikes in dozens of locations across the United States. Their work can be seen on a webpage where they’ve partnered with Treadmill TV and HikingGuy.com to provide more than 50 hikes in five states.

“It’s been a lot of experimentation so far,” Waugh said.

Waugh and Miracle told the Traverse City, Michigan, Record-Eagle the inspiration to venture into such a project occurred to them in similar ways but in different parts of the world.

Waugh said his breath was taken away when he reached the summit of the Kuliouou Trail in Hawaii and was given a full 360-degree view of the island.

“That’s where it sparked for me,” Waugh said. “I was thinking about how many people will never get that experience in their life. They’ll never be able to get out and see the beauty and nature.”

Miracle had the same “a-ha moment” while touring Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks.

“Seeing everything and being able to take everything in was so beautiful,” Miracle said. “Knowing some people can’t do that really opened my eyes that we should do something.”

A school science project

The two talked last year about doing a science project together. Miracle said the original intent of the project was to provide a way for people with ambulatory disabilities or issues with their limbs the chance to experience these hikes.

Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital, in Grand Rapids, in partnership with Munson Medical Center, has since reached out to Miracle and Waugh to see how they could work together to make that goal a reality.

“Allowing them to be able to view all of these great sights is really what this all about,” Miracle said. Waugh said they are hoping to develop an app to go along with their project.

Holly Zatkovic, AP chemistry teacher at Elk Rapids High School in Elk Rapids, Michigan, has from the beginning helped guide Miracle and Waugh’s work. She’s called the project “phenomenal” and “philanthropic.”

“I am extremely proud of the creativity, commitment and enthusiasm demonstrated by Garrison and Zak. They are both amazing students that are well on their way to becoming innovators and problem solvers of the future,” she said.

“What began as an idea for an independent study project has slowly become a design reality that will have a positive impact on society.” have face-to-face chats with your mom, but she’ll need home Wi-Fi installed.

Echo Shows, which come in three screen sizes — 5-inch ($90), 8-inch ($130) and 10-inch ($230) — will let your mom make and receive video calls to those who have their own device or who have the Amazon Alexa app installed on their smartphone or tablet.

Once you set up her contacts, to make a call your mom could simply say, “Alexa, call my daughter.” And when you initiate a call to her, she would ask Alexa to answer the call (or ignore it). There’s also a feature called “drop-in” that would let you video call your mom’s device anytime without her having to answer it.

Available at Amazon.com, the Echo Show also offers thousands of other features your mom would enjoy, such as voice-activated access to news, weather, her favorite music and much more.

If you decide to order an Echo Show device for mom, be sure you ask Amazon to mark it as a gift, so it doesn’t get tied to your Amazon account. How to take a (virtual) hike

The process itself is rather simple.

Those interested can go to Miracle and Waugh’s website, vr-hike.weebly.com, browse the map for hikes, pull up the video on their smartphone and, if they have one, pop the phone into a virtual reality (VR) headset and start the trek. [A variety of VR headsets for smartphones cost less than $40 on Amazon.]

The first “hike” the duo created themselves was of their high school. Miracle said it began with propping a 360-degree camera on a prototype of a helmet they designed and built.

They’re now working on trying to secure funding for a gyroscope stand for the camera to keep it level, and they hope to move out to the famed hiking trails in northern Michigan and record hikes at places such as Sleeping Bear Dunes.

“It was a passion project,” Waugh said. “We’re hoping that it just continues to grow.”

Video call options for the tech-challenged

Dear Savvy Senior, ple video calling and much more. The

Can you recommend some simple GrandPad is an 8-inch tablet specifically devices that can help tech-challenged designed for people ages 75 and older. It seniors with video calls? comes with a stylus, a chargMy 80-year-old mother has ing cradle and 4G LTE built been isolating herself for in, so it works anywhere withmonths now in fear of the in the Consumer Cellular netcoronavirus, and I haven’t work — home Wi-Fi is not rebeen able to see her facequired. to-face in quite a while. Ready to go right out of the —Concerned Daughter box, GrandPad provides a simDear Concerned, plified menu of big icons and

Video chatting is a great large text for essential features, way to stay connected and keep tabs on a parent when you can’t be there. But it’s SAVVY SENIOR By Jim Miller providing clutter-free, onetouch access to make and receive video calls, send voice even more important during emails, view photos and videos, this pandemic, as many isolated seniors are listen to music, check the weather, play also suffering from chronic loneliness. games, browse the internet and more.

To help connect you and your mom vir A GrandPad tablet costs $250 plus $40 tually, there are various products on the monthly service fee and is sold through market that offer simple video calling for Consumer Cellular at GrandPad.net or call those with limited ability or experience 1-888-545-1425. with technology. Amazon’s Echo Show: With its built-in

Here are four devices to consider: camera and screen, the voice-command

GrandPad: This is a top option for simEcho Show also provides a simple way to

–AP

For instructions to help your mom set it up, or if she doesn’t have a smartphone, go to Amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html, and type in “Help Loved Ones Set Up Their Echo Show Remotely” in the “find more solutions” bar.

ViewClix: This is a smart picture frame specifically designed for older adults who aren’t in a position to operate a device themselves. It lets family members make video calls, send photos, and post virtual sticky note messages to their loved ones’ ViewClix from their smartphone, tablet or computer. The recipient, however, cannot initiate video calls from their ViewClix. Home Wi-Fi is also required.

Available in two sizes — 10-inch for $199, and 15-inch for $299 — you can learn more about this product at ViewClix.com.

Facebook Portal: If your mom is a Facebook user, a voice-command Facebook portal (see portal.facebook.com) is another simple way to stay connected. Again, home Wi-Fi is needed.

By Luis Andres Henao

It started with a simple spreadsheet created by a group of college students who wanted to help during the pandemic.

In just two months, that spreadsheet has grown into an online platform that has connected do-gooders with nearly 3,000 opportunities to volunteer across the United States.

Corona Connects (coronaconnects.org) includes 170 volunteer categories — from food delivery and tutoring, to mental health and supporting nursing home residents.

The site, created by three students at the University of Pennsylvania, now is run by a team of 25 students from colleges nationwide. “We called this Corona Connects because Video calls From page 4

Portals, which come in three sizes — the original 10-inch Portal ($179), the 8- inch Mini ($129) and the massive 15-and-ahalf-inch Portal Plus ($279) — are like Echo Shows, except they connect through Facebook. we knew that corona spreads through droplets, but kindness can spread through connecting,” said Hadassah Raskas, a Penn senior.

Good idea goes viral

When the coronavirus crisis forced schools to go virtual, Raskas and University of Maryland junior Elana Sichel started a list of organizations in need of help. They realized that there were many needs and many students with extra time on their hands. “We started with just a spreadsheet. We thought we could post it to social media and try to get it spreading around and figured if we help 10 people or 50 people, that’s amazing,” Raskas said. “And we

quickly realized that that spreadsheet was

With a Portal, your mom can video call your smartphone or tablet (and vice versa) using Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.

Send your questions to: Savvy Senior, P.O. Box 5443, Norman, OK 73070, or visit SavvySenior.org. Jim Miller is a contributor to the NBC Today show and author of The Savvy Senior book.

BEACON BITS Ongoing EXERCISE CLASSES FOR YOU If you feel overwhelmed by generic workout classes, HASFit now has exercise routines specifically for older adults. Check out the free 10- to 30-minute videos on their YouTube channel at https://bit.ly/HASFitOnline.

Ongoing FILIPINO FOOD Would you like to learn new recipes? Discover how to make popular Filipino cuisine with videos by Eva Kronenburg, a former pastry chef at the cafe Convivial, on her YouTube channel at https://bit.ly/FilipinoFoods.

getting passed around, and we needed something better.”

Penn seniors Steven Hamel and Megan Kyne found out about the initiative through the Class of 2020 Facebook page and offered to build an easy-to-navigate site. Users can filter volunteer opportunities following their interests, location and availability. Organizations can also submit needs and recruit volunteers. “It’s a two-sided platform…so it’s a winwin,” said Shalva Gozlan, who’s in charge of the platform’s marketing. She found out about Corona Connects on social media and used it to find a volunteering opportunity as a crisis counselor. “I think the beauty of this platform is that we’re reminding people you might be geographically and physically alone right now, but we’re all interconnected,” she said. “We’re here for you. And we’re one society. We’re one humanity.”

While nonstop global news about the effects of the coronavirus have become commonplace, so, too, are tales of kindness. “One Good Thing” is a continuing series of AP stories focusing on glimmers of joy and benevolence in a dark time. Read the series here: apnews.com/OneGoodThing. —AP

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